Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First and foremost, I love this device and I love the Bluetooth iPhone App; however there is a HUGE bug in this device which must be known by everyone who is considering purchasing it. Essentially, the purpose of this device is to monitor battery capacity so you are never left on the water with a dead battery and it does a spectacular job measuring load coming off your battery; however it does not measure the power which the gauge consumes on its own and it will consume every last amp left in your battery until it is completely dead and unusable. Unfortunately when it does this, the capacity will still show 99.9% or 100% of your battery remaining but in reality your battery is dead as a doornail and cannot be used. I have had 2 instances of this happening. The first was in the fall of 2017 when the boat sat on the trailer for 60 days before I winterized it and when I went to start the battery it wouldn't crank. The second instance happened on Labor Day 2018 when the boat sat for just 30 days and the battery was dead as a doornail. Both times the batteries were left in the off position with 100% charge but while the boat sat on the trailer the BMV + the Bluetooth was left on and it consumed all of the battery power leaving the boat unable to start the next time I went to use it. Attached are pictures of the most recent occurrence where the BMV shows 99.9% charge, but an actual battery charger shows 30% capacity remaining (unfortunately with Lead Acid Batteries approximately 30% of the battery is unusable so this was more or less at at 0% charge). After the first instance, I emailed BMV support and Justin Larrabee replied back to me acknowledging my theory that the BMV does not register its own consumption and he recommended that I disconnect the shunt when not in use. The drawback to doing this is that the BMV will lose its saved settings and will need to be reconfigured and I told Justin this is not an acceptable solution and I requested a product update. I was told he would report this to the product team, but no update was ever done and I emailed him again on 9/17/18 advising that there is still an issue and the BMV is absolutely worthless with this bug and I would be leaving an Amazon review to alert all potential buyers of this bug. Justin did quickly reply back acknowledging my disappointment in this product and he would send it along to his development team again for a future update and he again told me to disconnect the BMV when the boat sits for long idle times to avoid dead batteries in the future. One final thing I will mention is that the BMV consumes 4ma of power at idle and the Bluetooth dongle consumes 1ma of power at idle so there is always a parasitic load of 5ma of power on your battery. If you do the math that would be a .005amp per hour draw so every 8 days the BMV + Bluetooth has consumes 1 amp of power. On a standard 100amp battery, only 70amps would be usable so it is only a matter of time (depending upon the age and state of your battery) before your battery is dead leaving you stranded with a false sense of security of having 100% charge. In conclusion, after owning this BMV unit for 2 years and seeing the bugs first hand with 2 instances of dead batteries and the BMV telling me I still had 99% charge remaining I would NOT RECOMMEND THIS PRODUCT TO ANYBODY. Purchase at your own risk, you have been forewarned.